Blog 4: Privacy

Main Ideas-

Papacharissi: This article focuses on the attempt to balance sociality and privacy on the internet.  By making people add personal information to sites to be on that social platform, they give up a lot of their privacy rights.  Papacharissi claims that the internet stratifies socio-demographic inequalities, meaning that those with lower incomes/less access to internet, computers, etc. are less computer literate, therefore giving up their rights to privacy online.

Facebook Privacy Issues: Social networking sites, such as Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ all use our data, but now we have to worry about what they do with our data, as well as what they enable other sites to be able to do with our information.  The fact that people could potentially find my social security number, credit report and work history on the internet is very unnerving.  It seems like the developers of privacy settings are not worried about their impact on the actual users.  Especially since there is no option to 'opt-out' of letting the internet use your information.  The only way to save your privacy is to not use the internet.  What is going to happen while technology continues to improve?  People obviously don't know this is happening, or it would not be making such a big story.

Facebook Retreats:  Facebook is being charged for using people's personal information in ways other than what the user agreed to.  There is developing technology that can allows personal information to profit other companies, following people's actions and what they do while on their networks.  Google and Twitter also have lapses in their privacy policies.  It amazes me how companies like this can use information for things other than what they are made for.  Now, Facebook's new timeline gathers information about the user's life, more than just the time they have been on the site.  They also only give a limited time to edit information before it is shared with other agencies.  Definitely not very private.

My Thoughts-
These issues of privacy make me nervous.  It was different when all I thought they had about me was my status update about how I want it to stop raining, but now they know more than they need to know.  Especially when anyone could find out where I live, or what some of my main day to day activities are.  I had never thought of privacy as an indicator of class standing, but it does make sense.  Those who know what can happen with sharing too much information will likely be more sensitive to sharing it.  Those who lack the knowledge will have no problem sharing their personal stuff.  The thing that made me the most nervous was the ability to find my social security number.  If I used online banking, what information would be available about my accounts?  It makes me feel like my identity could be stolen at any moment.  I want these companies to care more about what sharing this private information means for their users.  There could be some severe consequences for those who share too much, and in many cases they won't be able to go back and undo it.  Everyone should at least have the option to make their information private, or take it back, because right now the minute it is entered, it could be there forever.